One of the problems we face is that too many people have no clue about finances, whether it’s government, business, or personal. Sadly, too many families got themselves into exactly the same position as the example above.

Too many people blame the government, the banks, Wall Street, or whoever else happens to walk down the street. They should, instead, look in the mirror and quit complaining.

If you show them you’re making an honest effort to establish a credible budget that shows a realistic chance of paying your mortgage, most banks will work with you. They don’t want to lose money either.

Put the credit cards away in a drawer some place and don’t buy anything you absolutely don’t need. Pay cash (checks still work).

You don’t need a 54-inch HD TV (or even a little one). When push comes to shove, you can really do without a television, but I’ll concede a small, inexpensive one.

And you can do without cable or a dish. The area network channels do provide plenty of news and entertainment. There’s money that can be saved each month.

You can also do without a boat (unless you’re a commercial fisherman), an ATV, and a snowmobile.

Those are just a few places to start.

I expect there are a few who will say, “Yeah, that’s easy for you to say – you own a business.”

Well, I haven’t always. When I was young (and stupid), I over extended my credit cards – they used to send them to college grads to just sign and charge – and then went seven months without a job. I lived on macaroni and cheese, sometimes twice a day.

It took a long time but I worked my way out of it. It’s not easy and won’t happen overnight or even in the next five years. But that’s still better than losing everything.

If we could just get the government to think like that…. So far Scott Walker is the only one who has had the courage to face the issues head on and take any kind of necessary steps.

"Okay, now let’s remove eight zeros and pretend it’s a household budget." In a household budget you would not quit your job and eliminate the household income. Yet, this is what Walker has done and what Duffy and the likes are doing at the national level.

On the way to this to the Leader Message Board you must pass the front page of this Internet Edition of the Tomahawk Leader. It's funny how someone would choose to ignore two of the articles, One titled "0 levy increase after $712,000 debt reduction" referring to the Tomahawk Schools and the other to Lincoln County "County levy hike zero". Both of those entities survived without their usual 6% plus property tax increases. Considering all of the whining, the amazing part of it all is nobody got laid off. In fact Lincoln County is running adds for additional employees in the same addition of the Leader. I agree with Tobin about Scott Walker, he's had the guts to do the right thing for the taxpayers.

In some areas, yes, they managed to avoid layoffs (so far). However, in a lot of other places they haven't. Recent unemployment numbers for the state actually showed that a disproportionate number of the recent layoffs in the state were public employees, and primarily teachers. Expect a lot more people in the unemployment line when the new hidden budget cuts actually take place (the ones like the UW system having to return something like 90 million dollars).

Let me know when Walker gets those 250,000 private sector jobs going too, since so far it appears he's still bleeding jobs and all his "pro-business" moves haven't done jack to create a single job so far. Just lined a few supporters pockets. Oh, and let me know when he actually writes a check for his portion of his retirement for his whole time in office like he promised.

Funny how he can't keep the campaign promises he actually made, but had no problem throwing a ton of people under the bus completely unannounced...

Lets see, 3,400 education layoffs (triple last year) on top of significant retirements. One-third of districts increased class sizes and four in 10 (40% for the mathematically challenged) districts are using one-time federal stimulus funds to balance their budgets (wait, wasn't this budget supposed to make sure we weren't using one-time patches)...

Oh, and reports are that most larger businesses plan to issue raises this year and next to ensure they keep the good employees they have left. Many public employees have taken significant pay cuts the last three years (just like those in the private sector) and despite the so-called change to merit based pay, I have no possible way to get a raise any time in the next two years (Academic Staff at the UW were deemed ineligible for merit-based increases). I'm sure everyone can see the logic in all merit based pay increases being determined by the Department of Administration too. It's not like a manager or anyone that works with an employee might actually be the one to know if they're doing a good job. Nope, those raises won't go to Walker's buddies, that would never happen...

1.Walker was elected on a promise to create 250,000 private sector jobs in Wisconsin. After seeing the impacts of his disastrous policies, his administration has acknowledged that Walker won’t get anywhere close to fulfilling his campaign promise. We`ve actually LOST over 27,000 jobs since he took office.2.Walker’s budget cut over $800 million from our public schools, while at the same time placing caps on the amount of money school districts in Wisconsin can collect in property taxes to fund their schools.3.Walker cut over $500 million from the BadgerCare program. More than 200,000 Wisconsinites could face premium increases, and over 50,000 people may be cut from their state insurance plan completely as a result of this cut.4.While he was slashing funding for public schools and health care, Walker gave giant tax breaks to corporations, which added roughly $117 million to Wisconsin’s budget deficit.5.In October, Wisconsin led the nation with 9,700 job losses, 9,300 of which were in the private sector. This happened after Walker held his “jobs session” with the legislature, during which no jobs bills were even taken up. Let us not forget Walker’s deception from July either, when he boasted about Wisconsin’s robust job creation. Turns out he wasn’t exactly honest with us.6.Walker stripped most public employees of their right to collectively bargain. Walker’s union-busting bill means that teachers, nurses, prison guards, and other public employees in Wisconsin no longer have a say in their benefits and working conditions7.Walker signed a Voter ID bill that will make it harder to vote for thousands of eligible voters in Wisconsin. The people most affected by the restrictions in the bill include students, the elderly, the poor, and the disabled.8.While refusing to meet with Democratic lawmakers to negotiate a compromise on his union-busting bill, Walker spent 20 minutes on the phone with who he thought was out-of-state billionaire David Koch. During the call, Walker bragged about the baseball bat in his office and admitted that he considered planting troublemakers in the crowd at the protests.9.Wisconsin was supposed to receive federal funds to build a high-speed rail line from Milwaukee to Madison. Instead, Walker refused the money, which would not have added anything to the state budget, and the funds went to other states.10.After hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites came to Madison to tell Scott Walker not to balance the budget on the backs of working families, he put the State Capitol on lock down, preventing thousands of protesters from entering the building.

Perhaps we should change the law so we can have elections every 6 months so that we can waste some more tax money. That way every-time someone doesn't vote the way we like we can have another election. Perhaps we should have had a recall election on a monthly basis every-time we disagreed with duffus doyle and the way he ran the state into the dumpster. Would have made just as much sense.

I don't really believe that was the intent of the law when it was created. As I understand it the intent was for criminal or ethical issues. But I guess people just like seeing their tax dollars wasted and then their taxes raised.

Yep, Plagiarized. If your unable to write your own stuff at least put quotations around the material you copy. Lemming.

If history serves me correctly there has been tons of money spent on previous elections. Mostly money extracted from the taxpayer and recycled through the various teacher union's political campaign funds and lobbies directly into the slimmy palms of the various democrats. Democrats who create more laws to extract more money from the taxpayers. They did such a good job last time around Duffus Doyle and his cronies spent three billion they hadn't collected. Walker at least had the courage to address that overspending issue.

Here`s some more plagiarism, or facts, whatever you wish to call it.''Republicans are still trying to block President Obama’s plan for a $1,500 payroll tax cut for the average working American.

They've already voted once to let taxes rise by $1,000 for the average worker – proving that when it comes to protecting the middle class, Republicans want no part of it.

Republicans must be held accountable for their attacks on the middle class – please help defeat GOP state legislators across the country by contributing $10 or more to the DLCC!

The President’s payroll tax holiday is an idea Republicans have supported for years. In fact, they proposed it as an alternative stimulus idea back in 2009.

But the moment it looked like it might actually pass – and deliver billions of dollars directly into the hands of working families, instead of to millionaires and big business – Republicans flip-flopped faster than Mitt Romney at a GOP debate.

Now, instead of agreeing to the President’s plan, Republicans voted to take $1,000 out of every working family’s pockets.

The GOP’s tax hike is one holiday “gift” we should returned.

Despite Republicans’ shameful actions this week, the fight is not over. It only took Republicans two years to perform a complete flip-flop and become the party of middle class tax hikes. Maybe they’ll flip again even faster.

That’s why the President’s payroll tax holiday will be brought back up for a vote, again and again, right up until the GOP’s tax hike goes into effect.

Maybe after the shame of voting over and over again to raise taxes on the middle class, Republicans might finally decide do the right thing.

Xyz1 good to see that someone can think beyond a Ctrl C. Wholesale copying of some spin sheet has nothing to do with "facts" whether it comes from the right or the left. "The average working American" and the "average worker" have a job or in fact had a job at some point within the last decades. Habitually unemployed loafers have nothing in common with average working Americans.

"Are you referring to the more than $3 billion deficit Doyle inherited from the Republican administrations before him?"

I take it you mean the Republican administrations that were hamstrung by by the democratic controlled legislatures of the same time period. Doyle had a monopoly for his two terms in office and did nothing but run the state into more of a financial mess. When the Republicans tried to freeze the property taxes our former State Senator Roger Breske was bought off with a Doyle appointment to a Rail Road commissioner's Job for voting against his constituents interests. His background as a bartender made him well qualified for that Railroad job. The heavily funded opposition to the property tax freeze was the teachers unions. You will notice I didn't make any reference to the snow plow drivers or firefighters, the workers they usually use for cover for their antics. It's understandable, they've got to keep their trough full and the palms greased to maintain that power over state government.

"When your paycheck is smaller in January, be sure to thank your GOP lawmakers for throwing the middle class under the bus and protecting the millionaire "job creators" out there."

You're reference must be the extension to what was commonly referred to and with much disdain by the Reid-Pelosi crowd as the "Bush Tax Cuts." One must wonder what that has to do with a conversation on state government and Walker having the courage to do what he said he would do. My favorite is still the ubiquitous comment from those poverty stricken teacher's union members about "throwing the middle class under the bus." The question never answered is "Is that bus driven by one of those $160000 per year Madison bus drivers?"

Hate to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure they're referring to the Obama payroll tax credit that the Republicans said didn't do anything, then finally admitted it created jobs and now are in the process of holding it hostage to try and force some of their other agenda items through (like the oil pipeline going from Canada to the Gulf).

As indicated by others, the big difference is that the family would never consider solving its budget problems by cutting off its income. Yes you can cut spending but at what point do you want to reduce the standard of living? to a Mississippi? Arkansas?

After all Walker's bragging and commercials about his great strides in tax reductions I opened my property tax bill this afternoon. The state tax went down .75 cents. Overall they were down almost 20 dollars but 10 of that was due to an increase in the Lottery tax credit. I have gotten bigger reductions some years from Tommy Thompson and James Doyle and without the state being destroyed by controversy and a destabilized business climate.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show 21,400 more residents working since December ‘10

MADISON – The Department of Workforce Development (DWD) today re leased the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) preliminary data for December, showing Wisconsin’s unemploym ent rate dropped to 7.1 percent from 7.3 percent in November and 7.5 percent in December 2010, as the number of Wisconsinites working increased by 6,900 over the month and by 21,400 since December 2010.

“Our unemployment rate continues to decline and more Wisconsinites are working,” Secretary Reggie Newson said. “Challenges remain, but the latest dat a show we finished 2011 with more Wisconsinites working, record postings of over 151,500 on JobCenterofWisconsin.com, and higher state sales and withholding tax collections over the year, all of which point to economic growth for our state.”

It's not only the money being spent by Scott Walker for his campaign - in fact 20 times more than what those big out-of-state unions Walker refers to incessantly - I think we better all be concerned about our democracy when the likes of one of his big contributors, Sheldon Adelson from Las Vegas - to the tune of $250,00.00 - told Forbes magazine "as long as very wealthy people can buy elections, I'm going to", surely threatens "voters" in this country. You might remember he gave Newt Gingrich 16 or 17 million for his campaign. Now what possible interest could a billionaire from Nevada have in the WI governor's race? I only hope his ability to pick candidates holds out thru June so Scott Walker can join Newt in looking for a job! They pay better in the private sector anyway.